Lead author: Graham Smith, Chair of KNOCA
KNOCA has published a new report – Climate assemblies: emerging trends, challenges and opportunities – that draws lessons from the recent wave of climate assemblies and considers how they can improve their impact. The report was launched at the Spring School for Climate Citizens’ Assemblies organised with FIDE in Milan.
The report explains the valuable contribution assemblies can make to climate policy and governance, along with examples of impacts on policy, institutions, public debate and assembly members.
A striking finding is the way that the impact of climate assemblies has varied widely because of the different ways climate assemblies have been organised and integrated into the political system.
Often public officials who have organised climate assemblies speak about how challenging and difficult a process it can be, but always when asked say that they would happily do it again – learning from their mistakes of course!
The report is open about where current practice can be improved, not least in relation to definition of an appropriate remit, transparancy and communication, scepticism amongst climate governance actors, and integration in the political system.
The report ends with a summary of the work KNOCA will develop over the coming year to ensure that future assemblies are designed with impact.
KNOCA intends to update the report at regular intervals to capture new developments and learnings and would be delighted to receive feedback at info@knoca.eu.
A session at our Annual Meeting on 21 June 2023 will be dedicated to a discussion of the report.
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